The City of Santa Ana is proposing to open up the Santa Ana Riverbed to create a new bike trail that will affect residents living near the Casa Bonita Neighborhood from 1st to Willits & Raitt to the OC Flood Channel, according to an anonymous source.

Neighbors are concerned about this proposal as they allege that it will increase the chances of homeless encampments popping up again with so many of them having been recently displaced. They seem to gravitate towards riverbeds and bring with them increased crime including thefts from homes whose backyards will be exposed to the proposed new bike trail. The riverbed in question has been closed for some 30 years. Continue reading→

The pathetic NIMBY’s who oppose completing the Santiago Creek bike trail have been caught on film and the results are hilarious. What is not funny is their insistence on forcing bicyclists onto dangerous city streets instead of finishing the segment of the Santiago Creek bike trail that extends briefly through the Floral Park and Fisher Park portion of the creek.

Check out the video above and let us know what you think! And click here to find out more about what you can do to help us finish the bike trail!

Southern California’s PBS TV station, KOCE , is airing a story this Friday night about the controversy regarding the pending completion of the bike trail in Santiago Creek. A group of residents in Santa Ana’s Fisher Park Neighborhood are trying to stop the bike trail and are advocating for having the area fenced off from the public. The KOCE feature will present both sides of this story.

KOCE is going to air this segment on Thursday night at 5:00pm and 11:30pm on “Real Orange” on PBS SoCal, and it will be repeated on Sunday night at 5:00pm and 11:30pm. Continue reading→

The battle to finish the Santiago creek bike trail that currently ends under a bridge, just south of the Main Place Mall and Memory Lane, in north Santa Ana, took an interesting turn today as various letters and emails that were requested by the bike trail proponents were emailed by Santa Ana City Clerk Mary Huizar to an email list of media, bloggers and trail supporters. I loaded the documents into Google Documents and you can see them for yourself at this link.

What this all boils down to is a belief by the handful of residents who don’t want the bike trail that they would be better off by denying public access to the trail, with a fence. There demands are a bit tough to make out by pay special attention to the letter sent to the City of Santa Ana by their attorney, Mark Rosen. You remember him, he was an elected member of the Garden Grove City Council and he is Santa Ana Mayor Miguel Pulido’s lawyer, which strikes me as a bit of a conflict of interest. But there he is now representing the NIMBY neighbors. Continue reading→

Former Santa Ana Councilman Ted Moreno is defending the Fisher Park residents’ right to a messy creek

Former Santa Ana Councilman Ted Moreno has returned at long last from a self-imposed exile from local community affairs and politics. Moreno was drawn back into the fray by an article posted on this blog on Dec. 18, regarding the efforts by a handful of Santa Ana’s wealthier residents, in the Fisher Park neighborhood, to stop the Santiago Creek bike trail from being completed.

Moreno, was convicted of extortion and money-laundering in an alleged scheme to take control of the Santa Ana City Council and sentenced in February of 2001 to almost five years in prison, according to the L.A. Times. Many residents then and now felt that Moreno was entrapped and my old friend Lou Lopez, who was the first Latino elected to the Anaheim City Council, told me that the same FBI informant who entrapped Moreno, also tried to ensnare him. But Lopez, a retired police officer, ran the other way, while Moreno got caught. Continue reading→

A new website of people who are against finishing the Santiago Creek bike trail, called the “Save Santiago Creek Alliance,” is purporting to represent resident’s of Santa Ana’s Casa de Santiago, Fisher Park, Floral Park, Morrison Park, Riverview, and West Floral Park neighborhoods – but not one name appears anywhere on the website. It is completely anonymous.

I did get an email today from a fellow named Ronald E Salem. He claims to be the “interim director” of this mysterious anonymous organization, but his name is not to be found on their website. I did find his Facebook page. This guy is definitely part of the 1%. His profile picture (see above) shows him piloting a yacht. Nice. He appears to be a psychologist with a family counseling practice based in Glendora.

UPDATE: Now YOU can vote to support the completion of the portion of the Santiago Creek bike trail that runs through Santa Ana’s Fisher Park neighborhood. Click here to vote!

Did the Fisher Park NIMBYs who are blocking the completion of the Santiago Creek bike trail ruin their own neighborhood? It is a fair question to ask.

If you visit the Santiago Creek bike train in Santiago Park – or over at the Santiago Park Nature Reserve, you won’t see the horrible graffiti that is sprayed all over the place in the Fisher Park Neighborhood. Sure, you will find isolated tagging, but nothing like the disaster at Fisher Park.

And now, according to my sources, the Fisher Park NIMBYs, led by Rancho Santiago Community College District Trustee Mark McLaughlin and Chapman University Professor Paul Apodaca, want to fence off their part of the creek altogether – as if that will be some sort of panacea! It will only make things worse. Continue reading→

A possible creekside bike trail proposed by some residents in north Santa Ana is generating controversy in an adjacent neighborhood, with neighbors arguing over whether the trail would create more crime and safety hazards in the area, according to the Voice of OC.

The irony is that the path is currently a major safety hazard – there are plenty of areas for miscreants to lie in wait. If it was a bike path it would be clear, clean and would attract decent people trying to get exercise – instead of the gang bangers who litter the area with trash and graffiti.

If you take the Santiago Creek bike trail from Santiago Park, under the tunnel that takes you below Main St., towards the Discovery Center, it winds first west then north, then it jogs west again, below the 5 Freeway. It ends right as the trail gets interesting – with a chain there to keep folks out and a foreboding trail ahead that is full of huge rocks. You can hike the trail, but it is impossible to bike through it – and on your left, there is eventually a sheer drop of at least 18 feet, to the rocky Santiago Creek bed below. On your right, as you walk through the trail, are homes of folks who don’t want you to be there. Continue reading→